Rick Perry wasn't the first one out of the box but he has plenty of company.

According to published reports, as many as eight of the nation's 29 Republican governors staunchly oppose expanding Medicaid and creating a state-run health insurance exchange under the federal health care law: Perry and his counterparts in Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska and South Carolina. Another seven GOP governors are believed to be leaning against, with the remaining 14 undecided.

On Tuesday, Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, the chairman of the Republican Governors Association, wrote a letter peppering President Barack Obama with 13 questions about the law's inducements for states to add poor adults to Medicaid and 17 more queries about the exchanges, where federal subsidies will help low-to-middle income individuals and families buy private health coverage.

Many were technical but there were enough subtle digs to remind that Obama and the GOP governors are in a delicate dance: He needs them, for his landmark health law to have a chance of working. And while they don't need the president, most walk a fine line between appeasing fiscal conservatives dead-set against expanding the Medicaid entitlement and persuading safety-net hospitals, doctors and other highly interested parties that they're not just rejecting beaucoup federal bucks in knee-jerk fashion — that they've thought about it soberly. McDonnell's letter to the prez (which you can read here) struck a brisk and business-like, if impatient tone.

“With just 18 months until the anticipated implementation date of [the law], we would appreciate prompt answers,” said McDonnell, who last year succeeded Perry as the group's leader.

Predictably, McDonnell called the federal law “seriously flawed” and complained that increased spending to add poor adults to Medicaid's rolls would “crowd out” state funding of education and other, more popular programs. Even though the federal government would pay for the Medicaid expansion through 2016 and pay at least 90 percent of the cost after that, McDonnell suggested it's fools' gold. He questioned whether the federal government can afford to do that, “with deficits already over $1 trillion in every year of your presidency,” he told Obama.

I asked Jon Thompson, spokesman for the GOP governors' group, if there's a push under way for Republican state chief executives to provide cover on the health care issue for Mitt Romney, their party's presidential nominee. Now that the Supreme Court has removed the law's threat to yank all existing federal funds if states don't expand their Medicaid programs, could some GOP governors be balking to demonstrate “ObamaCare” can never get close to achieving nearly universal coverage?

“I'm sure some of them probably look and see how it affects the Romney campaign but I know most of them are going to do what's best for their states,” Thompson said.

Postscript: Even though the quick-to-resist GOP governors represent only eight states, more one-quarter of the 15.9 million Americans expected to gain Medicaid coverage under the federal law live in those states. Yes, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is offering to work with the states and be flexible. But basically, only Jerry Brown's California is keeping this thing from being a rout. It's No. 1, with more than 2 million people expected to gain the new Medicaid coverage, which Brown, a Democrat, supports. That's more than offset, though, by the fact that No. 2 Texas (1.8 million potential recipients by 2019, in the Kaiser Commission study) and No. 3 Florida (952,000) are likely to take a walk.

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The blog for the Dallas Morning News politics team tracks Dallas Fort Worth area, Texas and national campaigns.